Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  The low voice trembled, but now hers was lower still, and I at least lost most of her answer ... “if you really cared for me ... to take me away from a man who never did!” That much I heard, and this: “But you’re no better! You don’t know what it is to — care!”

  That brought an outburst, but not from the man beside me. He might have been turned into part of the Ionic pillar. It was Uvo who talked, and I for one who listened without another thought of the infamy of listening. I was not there to listen to anybody, but to keep an eye on Ricardo; my further action depended on his; but from the first his presence had blunted my own sense of our joint dishonour, and now the sense was simply dead. I was there with the best motives. I had even begun listening with the best motives, as it were with a watching brief for the unhappy pair. But I forgot both my behaviour and its excuse while Uvo Delavoye was delivering his fine soul; for fine it was, with one great twist in it that came out even now, when I least expected it, and to the last conceivable intent. It is the one part of all he said that I do not blush to have overheard.

  “Let us help each other; for God’s sake don’t let us drag each other down! That’s not quite what I mean. I know it sounds rotten. I wonder if I dare tell you what I do mean? It’s not we who would do the dragging, don’t you see? You know who it is, who’s pulling at us both like the very devil that he was in life!”

  Uvo laughed shortly, and now his tone was a tone I knew too well. “Nobody has stood up to him yet,” he went on; “it’s about time somebody did. Surely you and I can put up a bit of a fight between us? Surely we aren’t such ninepins as old Stainsby, Abercromby Royle, Guy Berridge and all that lot?”

  In the pause I figured her looking at him, as I had so often done when a civil answer was impossible. But Mrs. Ricardo asked another question instead.

  “Is that your notion of laying the ghost?”

  “Yes!” he said earnestly. “There’s something not to be explained in all the things that have happened since I’ve been here. To be absolutely honest, I haven’t always really and truly believed in all my own explanations. I’m not sure that Gilly himself — that unbelieving dog — didn’t get nearer the mark on the night he was nearly burned to death. But, if it’s my own ghost, all the more reason to lay it; and, if it isn’t, those other poor brutes were helpless in their ignorance, but I haven’t their excuse!”

  “I believe every word of it,” said the poor soul with a sob. “When we came here I thought we should be — well, happy enough in our way. But we haven’t had a day’s happiness. You, you have given me the only happiness I’ve ever had here, and now....”

  “No; it’s been the other way about,” interrupted Uvo, sadly. “But that’s all over. I’m going to clear out, and you’ll find things far happier when I’m gone. It’s I who have been the curse to you — to both of you — if not to all the rest....”

  His voice failed him; but there was no mistaking its fast resolve. Its very tenderness was not more unmistakable, to me, than the fixity of a resolution which my whole heart and soul applauded. And suddenly I was flattering myself that the man by my side shared my intuitive confidence and approval. He was no longer a man of stone; he had come to life again. Those hands of his were not fiercely frozen to the crop, but turning it gently round and round. Then they stopped. Then they moved with the man’s whole body. He was looking the other way, almost in the direction by which he and I had approached the temple. And as I looked, too, there were footsteps in the grass, Mrs. Ricardo passed close by us with downcast eyes, and so back into the wood, with Uvo at arm’s length on the far side.

  Then it was that I found myself mistaken in Ricardo. He had not taken his eyes off the retreating pair. He was crouching to follow them, only waiting till they were at a safe distance. I also waited — till they disappeared — then I touched him on the shoulder.

  He jumped up, gasping. I had my finger before my lips.

  “Can’t you trust them now?” I whispered.

  “Spying!” he hissed when he could find his tongue.

  “What about you, Captain Ricardo?”

  “It was my wife.”

  “Well, it was my friend and you’re his enemy. And his enemy was armed to the teeth,” I added, handing him the big stick that he had left leaning against the wall.

  “That wasn’t for him. This was,” muttered Ricardo, lapping the lash round his crop. “I was going to horsewhip him within an inch of his life. And now that you know all about it, too, I’ve a damned good mind to do it still!”

  “There are several reasons why you won’t,” I assured him.

  “You’re his bully, are you?” he snarled.

  “I’m whatever you choose to make me, Captain Ricardo. Already you’ve consoled me for doing a thing I never dreamt of doing in my life before.”

  “But, good God! I never dreamt of listening either. I was prepared for a very different scene. And then — and then I thought perhaps I’d better not make one after all! I thought it would only make things worse. Things might have been worse still, don’t you see?”

  “Exactly. I think you behaved splendidly, all the same.”

  “But if you heard the whole thing — —”

  “I couldn’t help myself. I found myself following you by pure chance. Then I saw what you had in your hand.”

  With a common instinct for cover, we had drifted round to the other side of the wall. And neither of us had raised his voice. But Ricardo never had his eyes off me, as we played our tiny scene among the broken columns, where Uvo and Mrs. Ricardo had just played theirs.

  “Well, are you going to hold your tongue?” he asked me.

  “If you hold yours,” I answered.

  “I mean — even as between you two!”

  “That’s just what I mean, Ricardo. If neither of us know what’s happened, nothing else need happen. ‘Least said,’ you know.”

  “Nothing whatever must be said. I’ll trust you never to tell Delavoye, and, if it makes you happier, you can trust me to say nothing to — to anybody. It’s my only chance,” said Ricardo, hoarsely. “I’ve not been all I might have been. I see it now. But perhaps ... it isn’t ... too late....”

  And suddenly he seized me violently by the hand. Then I found myself alone in the shadow of the wall which had once borne a fresco by Nollikins, and I stood like a man awakened from a dream. In the flattering moonlight, the sham survivals of the other century might have been thousands of years old, their suburban setting some sylvan corner of the Roman campagna.... Then once more I heard the nightingale, and it sang me back into contemporary realities. I wondered if it had been singing all the time. I had not heard less of it during the hour that Uvo and I had spent underneath this very wood, four summers ago!

  That was on the first night of our life at Witching Hill, and this was to be our last. I arranged it beautifully when I got in and had tried to explain how entirely I had lost my bearings in the wood. I told Uvo, and it happened to be true, that I had been wondering why on earth he would not come up north with me next day. And before midnight he had packed.

  Then we sat up together for the last time in that back room of his on the first floor, and watched the moon set in the tree-tops, and silver leaves twinkle as the wood sighed in its sleep. One more pipe, and the black sky was turning grey. A few more pipes, much talk about old times, and the wood was a wood once more; its tossing crests were tipped with emeralds in the flashing sun; and as tree after tree broke into a merry din, we spoke of joy-bells taken up by steeple after steeple, and Uvo read me eight lines that he had discovered somewhere while I was away.

  “Some cry up Gunnersbury, For Sion some declare, And some say that with Chiswick House No villa can compare;

  “But ask the beaux of Middlesex, Who know the country well, If Witching Hill — if Witching Hill — Don’t bear away the bell.”

  “I hope you agree, Beau Gillon?” said Uvo, with the old wilful smile. “By the way, I haven’t mentioned him since you’ve been back, bu
t on a last morning like this you may be glad to hear that my old ghost of the soil is laid at last.... The rest is silence, if you don’t mind, old man.”

  THE END

  The Short Story Collections

  Old School of Uppingham, Rutland — where Hornung was educated and developed his love of cricket

  UNDER TWO SKIES

  A COLLECTION OF STORIES

  CONTENTS

  JIM-OF-THE-WHIM.

  NETTLESHIP’S SCORE.

  THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY.

  THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER.

  STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN.

  AN IDLE SINGER.

  SERGEANT SETH.

  Hornung, 1905

  JIM-OF-THE-WHIM.

  I.

  His real name had gone no further than the station store. There it appeared in the ledger, and sometimes (though very rarely) on a letter in the baize-covered rack, under postmarks which excited the storekeeper’s curiosity; but beyond the store verandah he was known only as Jim-of-the-Whim.

  He lived by himself at the Seven-mile whim. Most of his time was spent under a great wooden drum, round which coiled a rope with its two ends down two deep shafts, raising a bucketful of water from the one while lowering an empty bucket down the other. The buckets filled a tank; the tank fed the sheep-troughs; and what Jim did was to drive a horse round and round to turn the drum. It was not an arduous employment. Jim could lean for hours against a post, smoking incessantly and but occasionally cracking his whip, yet serenely conscious that he was doing his duty. In times of plenty, when there was water in the paddocks and green life in the salt-bush, the whim was not wanted, and other work was found for the whim-driver. Unhappily, however, such intervals were in his time rare, and Jim was busy, though his work was light.

  Jim never neglected his work. Sometimes he took a few days’ holiday, and exchanged his half-year’s cheque for poisonous bush alcohol; this was only customary; and Jim was highly considerate in his choice of the time, and would go after a rainfall, when the sheep could not suffer by his absence. He never allowed his excesses to degenerate into irregularities. He knew his work thoroughly, and applied his knowledge without sparing his bones; when not actually driving the whim, he was scouring the plains for thirsty stragglers. As a permanency at the Seven-mile he was worth higher wages than he was ever likely to get from Duncan Macdonald, though this squatter would have conceded much (for him) rather than lose so reliable a hand. But Jim never asked for a rise; and Macdonald was perhaps not eccentric in declining to take the initiative in this matter.

  Jim’s hut was two hundred yards from the whim. As bush-huts go, it was a superior habitation. It was divided by a partition into two rooms; it had a floor. In the larger room stood a table and a bench, which were both movable; and this merit was shared in an eminent manner by a legless armchair mounted on an old soap-box. Prints from illustrated papers were pasted neatly on strips of sacking nailed to the walls. Sacks filled with the current rations hung from the beams. The roof was galvanised iron; the walls, horizontal logs of pine between pine uprights.

  Civilisation was met with on the threshold in the shape of a half-moon of looking-glass, nailed to the doorpost on the inside. This glass was only put to practical use on the infrequent occasions when Jim amused himself by removing his beard. At such times, when the operation was over, and Jim counted the cuts, the reflection showed a sun-browned face of much manly beauty, invested with a fine moustache in a state of picturesque neglect. His eyes were slightly sunken, but extremely blue; and he had an odd way of looking at you with his head on one side, owing to a breakage of the collar-bone from a fall far up country, when the bones had overlapped before growing together again.

  The station storekeeper, a young Englishman named Parker, who gave his services to the economic Macdonald in return for “Colonial experience,” and, among other duties, drove out with Jim’s rations, was the only regular visitor at the Seven-mile hut. Yet Jim had one constant companion and sympathetic friend. This was Stumpy, the black kitten. The genesis of Stumpy was unknown to Jim, who had found him in a hollow log, while chopping up a load of wood sent from the homestead. Jim had chopped off two inches of what he took to be a new variety of the black snake before discovering that he had mutilated an unlucky kitten. The victim became “Stumpy” on the spot; and from that moment the kitten shared every meal and sentiment of the man, and grew in wisdom with increasing inches.

  One cloudless winter’s day (it was in July) Mr. Parker, arriving at the Seven-mile hut at high noon, found Jim idly caressing the kitten, and singing. He always did sing when he played with Stumpy, except when he broke off into affectionate imprecations upon some new impertinence on the part of that quaint little creature. In fact, Jim sang a good deal at any time. At general musters of all hands, such as at the lambmarking, his voice made him popular in spite of his reserve, though he sometimes sang over the heads of his mates. To-day his singing was over the head of Mr. Parker, for it was in Italian, and Jim looked up with a quick change of colour at detection. He had, however, nothing to fear. Young Parker, so far from knowing Italian when he heard it, had been sent away from his public school because the rudiments of Latin were still beyond him at seventeen. Jim was pronouncing his words funnily — that was all that struck young Parker.

  “You’ve heard the news, Jim?” were Parker’s first words. “We’ve a visitor — a lady, ye gods! — Mrs. Macdonald’s sister.”

  Jim had heard nothing about it. He appealed to Stumpy, and inquired if he had any information. Altogether he treated the intelligence with indifference, and went on playing with the kitten. Parker was piqued. He was full of the guest at the homestead, Mrs. Macdonald’s enchanting sister, and must tell some one about her, even though the only accessible ear was a whim-driver’s. He launched into a rhapsody which occupied some minutes, and blended the old public school slang with the stronger-flavoured bush idiom, newly acquired. Jim heard him stoically; then he held up Stumpy by the fore-quarters, and addressed this animal gravely.

  “D’ye hear all that, Stumpy? Then just you forget it again, my little feller. Wimmin is nothink to us, as I’ve told you before; so never think on ‘em, Stumps, or you an’ me’ll fall out! That’s it — hé says he hears, Mr. Parker.”

  Parker changed the subject. —

  “Here’s a letter for you,” he said, and tossed a square blue envelope across to the whim-driver. It was not one of the well-directed letters he occasionally received, with English postmarks which invited speculation. It came only from Sydney, and the superscription was amusingly illiterate. Jim opened the letter — and turned whiter than the soiled sheet which now began to tremble violently in his hand. There were merely a few written words on this sheet of paper, but a short newspaper extract was pasted below them. The written words danced before Jim’s eyes; the printed words became illegible; and if young Parker had not been deep in the contemplation of his own face in the looking-glass on the doorpost (gloating over the promising beginnings of a russet bushman’s beard, and wishing he could have his photograph taken as he was, to send home to the old country), he might have seen Jim shiver from head to foot, and push the kitten from his trembling knees. As it was, by the time the youth did turn round, Jim-of-the-Whim looked and spoke like a calm and rational man.

  “Mr. Parker, sir — I want a cheque.”

  “You aren’t going on the booze again, Jim — already?”

  “No, sir. I want you to make out a cheque for — as much as I’m worth, payable to this name and at this address.” He tore off the portion of the sheet of letter-paper above the newspaper-cutting, scored out a few words with a stump of pencil, added three words of his own, and handed this upper portion to young Parker. “And please to put in this slip with the cheque, sir.”

  These were the three words that Jim had written— “To cover expenses.”

  II.

  THE young lady whom Mr. Parker had raved about to Jim-of-the-Whim was Miss Genevieve Howard, o
f Melbourne; and, to do that young fellow justice, he had but praised one who gained golden opinions on almost every hand.

  Miss Jenny had a pretty face, a perfect figure, a sweet soprano voice; and she was run after at the Government House assemblies. She was hardly, however, one of the Melbourne beauties. Her hair was free from special merit; she had no complexion at all. Even her eyes were of a neutral tint, though as a rule they were subject to such clever control that the colour was of no consequence; the rule was broken when emotion softened them; then they required no management to render them quite bewitching. Genuine feeling was no stranger to Miss Jenny, but depth of feeling was. She was emotional. And greater even than her talent for singing was her natural turn for coquetry, which amounted to genius.

  But when Miss Jenny came to stay in the back-blocks with her sister (whose invitations she had persistently refused for years) her little fling was over: she was engaged. It was a startling engagement. Her world could scarcely believe its ears when it was announced that the popular Genevieve — with her beauty, her money, her fairly smart tongue — had engaged herself to Clinton Browne, a country curate no better than a pauper. It seemed preposterous. It vexed many; it wounded one or two; but at least it scored off those hanging judges of Miss Jenny’s own sex who had averred that Miss Jenny was holding back until the Australian squadron should anchor once more in the bay, or another cricketing team come over from the old country. But these were not the people to be silenced for long. They presently heard of Mr. Browne’s translation from the country to a town curacy, and about the same time that Miss Jenny was going up country. They promptly declared that she was frightened of seeing too much of him. She was tired of an amphibious position in society (for Government House had been renounced); her enthusiasm for aboriginal missions and the rest had gone out as suddenly as it had caught fire; the originality, pathos, and romance attaching to the voluntary immolation of the brilliant Miss Howard on true love’s altar were losing their fragrance in her own delicate nostrils. All these points, and worse, her judges insisted on — not knowing that their most ingenious malice could not have condemned the accused to a worse servitude than station-life in the remote lonely regions of Riverina, where Miss Jenny now was. —